Reactions for Fifth Week

Daniel Keller’s asserted that keeping up with technology should not be a factor for determining why digital technology should be used in the classroom. I disagree somewhat, since composition instructors run the risk of having irrelevant course content when their classroom discourse is not compatible with the ways in which students are creating and consuming digital content in the classroom, as well as learning how individuals are communicating and looking at rhetorical possibilities.

I agree with Keller’s claim that instructors have the potential to help students think about their texts in critical ways. Critical thinking does not seem to be taught to students as much as formulas for getting good grades. Popular media rarely seems to encourage critical thought but instead seems to focus on the presenting of a serious of unquestionable facts or cultural references. Questions are sometimes thrown out at the end of programs, but only occasionally. If only critical reading were emphasized sooner, students might develop stronger writing skills when they are able to learn the fastest.

Many of the film and image-related topics such as camera angle and fadeout might carry somewhat of a learning curve for instructors more fluent in concepts such as tone and metaphor. However, this lack of familiarity with these concepts might benefit students to an extent, since the instructor can engage in modeling for the students by demonstrating how rhetoric can be explored with unfamiliar mediums. In other words, students can see first hand how the instructor handles his or her unfamiliarity with digital mediums.

If multimodal forms of learning become more common in the typical classroom, I wonder if students might benefit from taking a computer course specifically designed for orienting them towards technological skills that are most commonly used in the classroom. One potential drawback to this is that technology is continually changing and blogging, for example, might become irrelevant when some more effective methods replaces the blog. By that, I mean that the specific benefits of the blog are augmented in a future technology. Maybe there are skills that can be taught that help students master new software applications more quickly. The fact that I have been exposed to a variety of software applications early on in my life might have lead me to develop skills for mastering software programs that I’m not familiar with. Branscum and Tascano pointed out that successful teachers are able to rely on their previous experiences when creating effective Multimodal Composition courses and students can also likely develop skills that can transfer to ever changing technology.

I found the four C’s on page 85 to be very helpful. Particularily, I thought “compatibility” and “cool” were useful concepts. Students with high-technology proficiency can be frustrated by over-instruction just as much as students with low technology proficiency can be frustrated with under-instruction. In my experiences as a student, professors who remain calm during tech glitches or poor configuration kept students calm, but these setbacks still waste precious class time. But this time doesn’t have to be wasted as Branscum and Toscano pointed out. Technological mishaps can be a teachable moment.

Should assignment due dates be flexible in a Multimodal Composition course? I say… of course! As students and teachers, we’ve al had experience with the typical essay. We have a general sense of how long it takes to write one and many times, the reason for a late assignment is that the student procrastinated. However, with technology, we must be more flexible with the time-consuming learning curve that students have to get over.

Shipka brought up the debate over what instructors should teach in the composition classroom. In an ideal world, I would say that students should be given a broad range of choices regarding what they could choose to write and then should at some point be given the option of choosing which type of essay they want to focus on. Instead of having instructors decide what writing skills the students will learn, why can’t students make that decision? Shipka said that students shouldn’t be free of standards with regard to their writing. However, couldn’t students be allowed a model where they tell the instructor what they would like to write and the instructor could help them understand the standards for the genre they are aiming for? Unfortunately, many students are only interested in figuring out the formula that will give them the A and instead of telling their instructor what they want to learn, they will likely get frustrated and ask to see the prompt.